Solidarity
by Edmund West
Summary: Wikus has been learning to live as a prawn in District 10 for just over a year. When the orphaned child he adopts suddenly dies, Wikus must turn to his newfound race for help. But everything is not as it seems.
1. Chapter 1

It was only a little chocolate; Wikus had no idea what damage it would do, and the little guy had seemed so excited over it. He had tasted it himself first, even so—just in case, as with dogs, it might be poison to Poleepkwas—and nothing had happened to him. It had tasted wonderful and so much different than it had on a human tongue, but the last time he'd had the stuff was more than a year ago, and there were many things, sensations, he could not quite properly recall from being human.

At any rate, he believed the treat to be safe, and had gone through a great deal of trouble to get it...but the youngling had died less than twelve hours after eating the bar. The little guy had no parent to mourn his loss; his sire had been killed in a skirmish with MNU agents three months before over the matter of a stolen set of tires. Bald tires that had actually been discarded but not yet brought inside the walls of District 10.

The child was left alone to hide and fend for himself among the ever increasing, ever desperate and ever duller population of the prawns and Wikus had come across him cowering under a mound of trash while he hunted for decent aluminum with which to make the small junk-sculptures that managed still to find their way to his wife's doorstep. What could he do? The kid looked so much like Oliver. Wikus offered him a can of cat food and took him in to his own tiny tent home to look after him.

It eased somewhat the loneliness that he had suffered since Christopher's departure, since his separation from humanity. The other prawns tended to avoid him—he was somewhat infamous, and if they respected what he had done, he was still not truly one of them and they were wary of getting too close. He was still wanted by MNU, and he had no identification number, no papers. He was wholly an illegal, and no one wanted to get involved in his situation. It didn't help that he had a speech impediment, either.

His mouthparts had not quite formed properly during his transformation—likely due to a broken jaw he'd suffered during his third week—and he could not form the Poleepkwa "words" properly. Thankfully, he found that the prawns had surprisingly animated faces when one learned to look properly, and he used his expressions to communicate as well as he could, along with the few clicks he could make and the "signing" he could perform with his tentacles and antennae. It seemed enough to get by on, to get what he needed to live. And the youngling seemed to understand him easily enough.

For three months, they shared a quiet and pleasant companionship. Wikus taught the little guy where he could best come and go though the District's defenses, where to get the cheapest food, find the best trash-treasures, and acquire the cleanest water. He was able to make toys for the boy in the same manner he fashioned roses, birds, trees, and pinwheels for his wife. Wikus communicated as well as he could in his stuttering language how they would all be free in just two more years when Christopher returned for all of them, and he decided to name the young one Jacobus—he had had an uncle with that name, and he could actually nearly pronounce the pet form "Coos". The former human had even gone through the difficult and costly trouble (he'd spent six weeks acquiring an arc gun and a few other scavenged bits of tech) of securing a nearly-legitimate identification for the boy so that he would not have too much trouble if he ran into any officials.

But none of it mattered now. If Wikus had ever doubted that Prawns could cry, those doubts were washed away with the brackish tears that gathered in the folds of soft tissue around his eyes.

Coos had been running junk-flowers to Wikus' old house for him for a couple of weeks, since Wikus had shown him where he once lived, and to reward the boy, he had bought a whole, new, clean and unopened bar of chocolate. It was very expensive, and hard to get. The little guy had trilled and hopped around excitedly, taken the bar to the back of the white tent and his "room" to play with his toys and enjoy the treat while Wikus went out to scavenge and learn what news he could of the outside world.

When he returned with his finds and a pan of slaughter slop for the youngling's dinner...well.

Wikus wanted nothing more than to die, just then, as he cradled the little body in his arms. He didn't know what he should do—did prawns bury their dead, or burn them? Surely they didn't eat them...he couldn't believe that, after the way Christopher had reacted to his dead comrades inside the MNU labs. He had absolutely no idea and that made him feel a bit ill—he determined that he would ask someone, and for now, he tucked Coos' little body up into his bed with his favorite toy—a tin, plastic and cloth prawn mech suit—and dried his eyes on the back of his arm before turning to gather up some cans of cat food into his ratty knapsack to trade for information, and for help.


	2. Chapter 2

It took quite some doing on Wikus' part to convey his message to the older creature with his lack of spoken language ability and his even greater failing at writing in the concise alien alphabet—everything had always been translated somewhere in English for him at MNU, and he managed only to string together a few of the symbols to convey "child dead help" along with his frantic clicking and the agitated twitching of his pedipalps.

The elder knew exactly who he was—they all did, it seemed—and was loath to lend assistance in case it should lead to trouble. He refused the cat food Wikus offered, which was a bit confusing, and Wikus roared and snorted at him out of frustration, then continued with his limited ability to plead his case. In the end, the elder agreed to send one of his less-favored offspring to help and Wikus hissed in relief.

The prawn he got was short, with a dull, almost tawny coloration and a withered arm, which he attempted to hide inside of a ratty stretch of cloth wrapped thickly around his middle and loosely over one shoulder. He snuffled and wheezed with the same regularity as Christopher had, and suffered frequent coughing fits, and his name sounded something like _Ah'oo'tzalhah._ Wikus decided to think of him as Walter. It was just easier that way.

The guy was nervous, his antennae working overtime and the secondary set of hands constantly fidgeting with the cloth around his abdomen, rubbing over one another, reaching at the air. They never seemed to retract against his body, in fact. It made Wikus uncomfortable, but he wasn't sure why.

When they reached Wikus' tent home, Walter paused at the entrance, casting a nervous glance around him before ducking inside (though he was so short, he really didn't have to duck much) and then stood unsurely for a moment, perhaps looking for the reported dead child, before jerking forward and heading to the back of the tent and the little cloth-enclosed space that had served as Jacobus' bedroom.

Wikus followed him, his own chest-arms flicking with emotion. Walter had knelt down beside the palate that served as a bed, giving a congested huff over the little one's lifeless body.

"How did this happen? He was not shot? There are no wounds." The prawn swiveled one antenna toward Wikus, who gave a grunting and rough sort of groan, letting his shoulders slump a bit in their sockets.

He cast about and found the candy wrapper on the floor, picking it up and putting it in Walter's good hand. The prawn clicked with curiosity and inspected the trash, sniffing at it, running his mouthparts over the waxy inside, which still contained some smears of melted chocolate before trilling and hopping around, still in a crouch, to face Wikus.

"Yes, please. Do you have more? But this will not help to discover what killed your child."

Wikus shook his head and snorted, grabbing the wrapper back and pointing it at the boy's body, causing Walter to stare at him blankly for a moment, still, before his pedipalps reached up and out in prawny surprise.

"Oh, I understand. That's very strange—where did you get it? Nevermind. I have never heard of anyone dying because they ate chocolate. You are sure there are no wounds?"

If the situation had been a bit less grave, Wikus might have laughed at the way the prawn attempted to pronounce "chocolate" in English, screwing up his face to do it—but no, he shook his head, he hadn't noticed any wounds, any cracks in the juvenile's soft shell, nothing. Perhaps it had been a sort of allergy. Did the Poleepkwa have allergies?

Walter was already bent over the little body, having carefully uncovered the boy and moved his toy out of the way. He was intently inspecting Coos' entire miniscule form with three good hands and after a moment he gave a coughing growl and sat back again, gently pulling up on one of the little guy's air vents with his chest-hand and pointing at it with his primary appendage.

"Look. His air is blocked," he gestured at his own lungs, which flared in sympathy, and continued, "with something sticky...the chocolate could not have done this."

Walter gently settled Coos' body back into place and turned again to Wikus, standing and looking around in nervous concern.

"Your child was murdered."


	3. Chapter 3

Wikus' immediate reaction was to say "what do you mean murdered!" but it came out, for his lack of oral mobility, as a shocked and angry yelping snarl that made Walter flinch back from him, pulling his lower arms as tight as he could manage against his abdomen, over the cloth there, and folding his antennae down and back as far as they would go until Wikus' expression slipped into something more desperate. The revelation didn't alleviate his guilt; it was still his fault, his responsibility, and he should never have left Jacobus alone. He couldn't help but to think that whoever had committed the crime had done so because of him. Because of what he was.

After a moment of his tense and twitchy inaction, Walter offered a consolatory trill and hopped forward cautiously, still keeping his chest-arms tucked up, but reaching up to pat Wikus' shoulder with his good hand before jerking it away again quickly and falling back into his usual near-crouch, his lower hands falling loose again and fidgeting over each other in that somehow-vulgar way that slightly distressed the former human.

Wikus watched him for a wary moment, noting his queerly green eyes, like jade or, he thought, more like a pale, sickly, milky mint color. It reminded of him the chalky antacid he would sometimes take for an upset stomach. He shook his head from the thought before he made himself sick and turned his attention back to the dead boy with a snuffling grunt, stepping around Walter so that he could lean down and lift Jacobus up, cradling the body carefully tucked against his chest, gently lifting the boy's stiffening air vents to examine the gummy matter that had apparently suffocated him.

It was a translucent cobalt color, and he wondered how he could have missed it earlier, lowering the flap and squeezing his eyes shut with a shuddering groan before thrusting the body at Walter—who nearly dropped it in surprise as he tried to keep his grip with his single hand.

The malformed prawn looked between Wikus and the dead boy anxiously several times, uncertain what he was meant to do until the taller managed to grind out, while wincing painfully at the way his crooked jaw grated in its socket "Please, I don't know what you—we—do with the...with the once who've gone."

Walter chittered—the equivalent of an uncomfortable human "ummm..."--and shifted on his feet. "Father says they should be burned, here...so the humans don't take them away to their medical complex."

Wikus shuddered, remembering the grizzly arrangement of MNU's Bio-lab 01, the utter _mess_ of it all. The stench, and the sudden realization that what he had taken for lab-animal sounds at the time had been the screams and cries of Poleepkwa coming through the walls, suffering god-fucking-knew what. He nodded to his companion in agreement, and wondered if there were any funeral rites to be performed. He knew there must be _some_ reverence for the dead by the way Christopher had reacted to that particular body in the bio-lab. Of course, that might have been out of horror for his people as a whole rather than any real grief over a fallen comrade.

Walter kept hold of the little body and headed out of the back room and through the tent, stopping at the entrance to stick his head out and peer around cautiously, antennae twitching, before huffing for Wikus to follow and leading him back to his father's tent, explaining along the way that he wanted to elder to see the matter caught up in the little guy's lungs that they might be able to discover something about who could had done this.

There seemed to be some argument over the corpse and Wikus paced outside the tent with vexation. When he'd gone in with Walter, the several prawns gathered inside had grabbed Coos' body, demanding explanation from Walter while simultaneously shouting at Wikus to get out, throwing half-empty cans of cat food at him until he had snarled and backed out of the tent again.

He could hear Walter arguing for him, but other voices countered with "he's not one of us" "the child isn't even his" "he'll only bring trouble" and "fuck the human" in the clipped tones Poleepkwa spoke with when highly agitated until the elder barked for them all to be quiet and continued too quietly for Wikus to hear what was said. Another argument broke out not long after, more heated, and so busy with noise that Wikus couldn't make out what was being said at all.

There was some screeching, then, angry howling and a moment later Walter was expelled from the mouth of the tent, stumbling forward on his too-short legs before regaining his footing with a cough only to be startled into a run as one of the other prawns came out after him, wielding an arc gun. Walter was already disappearing behind a supply shed three rows down, and the armed prawn turned on Wikus viciously, lashing out with a powerful kick that knocked the quondam man back and nearly off his feet.

"Get the fuck out of here, you cursed piece of shit! If we ever see you or that cripple again, you'll both be dead!" the last word was spat—literally, splashing a mess of foul, blackish liquid down one side of Wikus' chest plates. A deep insult and a show of disgust akin to shitting on someone's dining room table.

When Wikus snarled in disgust and made to lunge at the other, the thrum of the arc gun powering up to fire stopped him cold and he half turned, snorting at the offender before running off in the direction Walter had gone.

He caught up to the pale creature a few rows down, finding him half-collapsed on a trash pile, coughing so hard that Wikus was afraid his chest plates might crack. He padded over and pulled the smaller prawn up to his feet, patting his back uselessly a couple of times before he noticed that Walter had something clutched against belly, held tightly with all three of his functional hands.

It took him another moment to realize what it was, to make out the distinctive triangular shape of a prawn's front-most chest plates. And the size... He snorted and took a step back, horrified. No wonder the others had chased him off, he'd torn a part of Jacobus' body away to—what, to eat? Wikus wasn't about to let _that_ happen, and he snarled, reaching to snatch the piece away, but Walter was already holding it up for him. "They didn't want you to have it, they wanted to burn all of him. But you should keep, so I took when they weren't looking." He thrust the tiny bit of shell at Wikus again until he took it, holding it out before himself at a loss. Little bits of gore still clung to the bowl of the inside and Wikus felt his stomach leap, threatening to present its contents publicly. He turned it face-up quickly, and Walter looked abashed, dropping his antennae and rubbing at his chest hands.

"I am sorry that it couldn't be properly cleaned first—but I can help," he said, taking a hopeful half step forward and taking the piece back gently. "I'll clean it and mark it for you—what was his name?" The prawn's pedipalps lifted in curiosity, clawing at the air for a moment before settling again.

Wikus was confused, and he felt terribly sick, but did his best to answer, his face scrunching up with pain. "I don't know. I called him Coos. Why would I want...that?" he said, pointing briefly at the gruesome trophy before pulling his hand back quickly, as If afraid to get too close to it. His companion blinked a couple of times, one chest hand stroking over his abdomen in thought.

"So that you can remain close. It will be marked with his name so you can remember and tell your future children about him, and then they'll know him too. So he'll live on, and not be forgotten and lonely."

It made sense, he supposed, and suddenly didn't seem any more ghoulish than keeping the ashes of your granny on your mantle. He trilled a thanks to Walter and turned to go, expecting the shorter fellow to follow him, but Walter hesitated a moment.

"Wait—you should know, too. The stuff that poisoned him, it is Poleepkwa in origin."

"Do you know who?" he was quick to reply, turning around again and advancing on the smaller creature, who shied away from him before realizing he wasn't going to be struck. The nervous little fellow gave a look around and then started up the row toward Wikus' tent, motioning for him to follow.

"Not here."

Wikus growled and went after him, keeping an eye out for the guys from Walter's tent group.


	4. Chapter 4

_A/N: Hey guys--thanks to everyone who's watching and faving this fic so far. It's very kind of you certainly...but **everyone loves reviews**! ;)_

She knew he was still alive after the third little item was left on her doorstep. It had been wrapped in old, slightly soggy newspaper and it had been absolutely beautiful—a large butterfly made of tin and old wirebrush with bits of brightly colored glass and plastic wired into shapes cut into the wings like stained glass; brilliant blue, plastic green and crackled red and when she'd hung it in the window, it cast brightly colored shadows on her bedroom wall. She cried every time she saw them, in the mornings when the sun came through just right and sent the shapes gently sliding this way and that along the wall as the trinket spun and swayed on its string.

After that, Tania had started staying up nights, trying to catch him in the act. She would sit in the living room, in the dark, with a cup of coffee, ears straining at every little noise outside. Heart racing every time something scrabbled across the walk, over the driveway, she would will herself to stand and look out the window or to throw open the door but her body never obeyed, heart and mind at war; one wanting only to see him again, to talk to him and the other needing to avoid what she knew was true: her mind might break at the sight of her husband now a monster. And she couldn't bear it if she screamed in his face in horror and scared him off forever.

The last gift had been left just over a week ago, and they were becoming more infrequent—of course, she could understand that. It was almost 250 kilometers for him to travel, and she imagined that even on those long and quick legs he must now have (she tried not to shudder at the thought), the journey would still be tiring, and very dangerous. The present this time consisted of a giraffe made from scraps of cloth stretched and tied over a wire frame and it was accompanied by a smaller-than-usual flower which had only four petals and was rather ragged and haphazardly made. She supposed he had been interrupted in it's completion somehow, and loved it all the same. Tania had also, this time, willed herself to get up from the sofa and look out the window after the rustling of newspaper died down outside the front door. She did not see Wikus, and was uncertain whether she should be thankful for that—but there was, just at the end of the drive behind one of the sadly overgrown topiary, a small figure crouched and not-well hidden, bright and large eyes fixed on the front door.

Tania wondered why Wikus would send a child all that long way alone, and then figured he must not have, he must be nearby himself and more adept at hiding in shadows. For a moment, her heart won out and she moved quickly to the front door, carefully clicking it open and peeking out into the dark places around the reach of the streetlights. The little creature hiding in the bushes leaned up curiously, peering around the edge of the foliage until he—it?--nearly fell over. Tania picked up the present and stepped out onto the front step, looking over at the child and making it duck away behind the bushes. She called to it, trying to keep quiet.

"Hullo? I see you there...is Wikus with you? I just...I just want to see him..." her voice wavered and she could feel her eyes prickling even as her bare feet moved her down from the step onto the little path to the drive, but when she came forward, the creature startled and darted out from behind the topiary and off up the road, turning into a dark lawn and hopping over a fence.

There was no other movement, no other sound in the dark apart from her own quiet sobs. Wikus wasn't here, and she knew she would not have the courage to look out the window a second time.

Tania clutched her gifts to her breast and fled back into the house.


End file.
